About this collection

Background

On February 19, 1942 President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 providing broad powers for the War Department to create exclusion zones and to initiate an evacuation program for the Western Defense Command (WDC). Under the leadership of General John Dewitt of the WDC, the Civil Affairs Division (CAD) and the Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) were created in order to provide for the transition of voluntary evacuees, enemy aliens and United States citizens alike, from exclusion areas to other parts of the country.

The failure of the voluntary evacuation plan led President Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 9102, which established the civilian-run War Relocation Authority (WRA). The WRA was mandated to institute enforced evacuations. Due to the recalcitrance of states on the interior of the country to accept the Japanese evacuees or to provide for their safety, the WRA also constructed internment centers in order to house the evacuees. Between 1942-1945 the WRA, the WCCA, the CAD and the Office of the Commanding General of the Western Defense Command segregated and housed approximately 110,000 Japanese-American men, women and children.

The Digital Collection

The King Library Digital Collections includes all of the 135 photographs in the Flaherty Collection, which document the experience of Japanese-Americans in assembly centers and relocation camps in California, Oregon, and other Western states. For additional information about using images in the collection, contact the SJSU Special Collections Department.

The Physical Collection

In addition to the digitized photographs, the Flaherty collection consists of documents related to the establishment and administrative workings of the WDC, the WRA and the WCCA for the year 1942. It includes administrative policies, orders, manuals, correspondence, statistics, posters, and newspaper clippings. The bulk of this collection documents the activities of 1942 but some material covers other time periods.

For a description of the contents of the physical collection, see the online Finding Aid.

For more information about the scope of the physical collection see the online collection guide.